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supriyo-biswasHNSource author
Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

The way they used to handle that at a FAANG I worked for was they had this app installed on each …

The way they used to handle that at a FAANG I worked for was they had this app installed on each machine issued by IT, that would ask you a question daily about some aspect of your workplace. Handles all the phishing concerns, except that participation was either low or the feedback was negative, which would lead to the leaders issuing subtle threats to the team about how they'd find out the involved folks and fire them. If you tried to uninstall it, it'd be back in a few hours through policy management software (jamf and its ilk). On the internal discussion forums, they'd nuke threads talking about how to disable that software. So, in the end, people just started giving the best possible feedback regardless of the team or manager performance. I never really needed those threads, all I needed was tcpdump and then blocking its domain in the hosts file :)

Original discussionWant to piss off your IT department? Are the links not malicious looking enough?320 source comments · at import
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thinkingtoiletHN

I had the opposite funny experience. When I worked for Global MegaCorp, they would occasionally send out phishing emails and if you clicked on a link it would be recorded and you would have to do trainings if you got fooled a couple times. Eventually everyone learned to stop clicking on links on emails. That's good. However, they sent out a yearly survey to get feedback from all the employees and no one clicked the link so they had to send out follow up emails saying the original emails are legit and it's ok to click the links in them.

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gusgus01HN

Somehow this and the parent both represent Amazon. Daily questions and a yearly survey that security had to assure us was legit.

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eruHN

> So, in the end, people just started giving the best possible feedback regardless of the team or manager performance. That seems to be the best possible strategy for any feedback you have to give as a captive audience? Reminds me of the feedback German companies are forced to give about their employees. It's like a formal letter of reference, but you can and will be sued if you you anything negative. Consequences are as you would expect. And because there has been an inflation in how complimentary these letters are, people started suing when their letter wasn't flowery enough, because that somehow could be read as an implicit criticism. (Just like how A is a bad mark, when everyone else gets A+.)

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dlenskiHN

> The way they used to handle that at a FAANG I worked for was they had this app installed on each machine issued by IT, that would ask you a question daily about some aspect of your workplace. I presume you're referring to "Amazon Connections"? Had to be the most-hated bit of corporate enforcedware around. Every Linux laptop user had a different hack for hobbling or removing it.

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